The Inheritance
by Sulime
Summary: In 2003, Kate McPherson is given a letter from a long-dead relation about love, war, and finding one's place in the world while a new country forms around you.


* * *

Kate McPherson hated ringing telephones. The noise galled her to the very core of her brain, and the people usually at the other end tried her patience. She tried to shut out the noise until the answering machine picked up and the caller announced themself. She could get caller ID, sure, but that would cost money and she'd have to get up to read who it was. She listened to the message, an unfamiliar male voice.

"Hello, Miss McPherson, this is John Hauser. I'm an attorney who has been instructed to contact you according to the will of one Mairi Ferries. Please call me back at..." Hauser left his number, and Kate copied it down. Mairi Ferries was an unfamiliar name to her, but it couldn't hurt to see what some old bag had left her.

Kate called back the next morning, and was given instructions to an office in Philadelphia. The man who identified himself as Hauser was a typical lawyer, gray-suited and impersonal.

"Who exactly is this Ferries woman, and what does it matter to me?" she asked brusquely. Hauser handed her a thick packet of papers.

"This is a copy of a letter that the deceased wrote before her death. The original is stored in a vault, due to its delicate condition."

"Why so delicate if she just died?" asked Kate. The lingering sense that something was very odd about this settled itself in her stomach.

"You misunderstand, Miss McPherson. Mairi Ferries died in 1854 in New York. She was your many times great grandmother. She wrote this to be read by female descendants only, and then preserved for future generations."

"Who was she?" asked Kate, vision clouding in an all-too-familiar way.

"I believe the letter explains all you'll need to know, and I'm as mystified by this as you are. You are the last remaining descendant, so there are further instructions attached to the letter by the deceased for you, I believe. Good day, Miss McPherson."

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

Kate took a cab home and ran up the stairs, skipping every alternate step along the way. The clouding in her vision was a telltale sign of one of her greatest secrets. Kate McPherson had discovered at a young age a sensitivity to things not quite explainable by science. She wasn't a psychic a la Uri Gellar, though. She kept it a secret, experimented on her own. Holding the words of a 150 years dead woman was setting whatever it was strongly. Kate burst into her apartment, locked the door, unplugged the phone, and poured herself a small dram of absinthe to help her a little. She sat down with her drink and began to read.

_Dear children and grandchildren alike,_

I would have liked to spread my story through word of mouth best, but I fear that it would become warped and unrecognizable with too much telling. I write these words an old widow, my husband dead for a few years now. I will join him again soon, but before I do I have to impart this message to you. Even now as I look out into New York harbor from my home, I see people who have come to this land in exile. They are Irish, like me and you, even if the long years in this country have made you forgetful. The crops over the sea have failed, and the exodus has begun. The end of the journey is full of woe as well, I fear, for already people are hostile towards them and their beliefs. I have let a few of these sad-faced immigrants rent rooms from me for very little. But they will persevere and survive here. I am worried about their children, their children's children, and all their progeny later on. They will feel a pain that I already have started to be aware of. This is why I am not letting Death take me just yet, for you of my kin who are yet in America must feel it too.

Before I tell you what troubles you so, whether you notice or not, I will tell my story and hope you can realize what you need to do by the end of this last letter.

The introduction ended there, and as Kate began to read the story from the beginning, the absinthe took hold and her vision escaped her. Instead, she saw a shanty where Mairi's story began. She leaned back and let the altered senses come.


End file.
